A Classic Ghost Story

Sardines is a big deal amongst the youth of my church, especially the drama department. We play it at cast parties, late rehearsals, lock ins, et cetera. Our church is very small, so we all know it like the back of our hands and come up with perfect hiding spots weeks in advance. This year, however, something was drastically different.

We paired up around 10:00, and set off to look for the hiding pair about five minutes later. The prime hiding spots in the church are along the seemingly endless back hallway, which runs the length of the church. There are no windows - just classrooms with closed doors - and the only light comes from emergency lights in other parts of the church and the red exit signs. The nursery is a particularly treacherous hall, since no light at all reaches it and the classrooms have no windows. Perfect setting for a spooky night. My partner Logan and I looked in a few of the classrooms ourselves, but then joined up with two other girls, Foster and Julie, to head into the nursery. Clutching each other, we peered into each of the rooms. I could have sworn I heard something move behind one of the baby cribs, but we hurried out of there ASAP without checking it out. The nursery opens into a fully lit hallway, which leads to the ministry center, a gym-like room with a stage and two doors leading into the kitchen. It would be a hard place to hide, but I did manage to stay hidden for almost half an hour behind some chairs the previous year. We set out looking.

All of the sudden, Foster and Julie gasped. "I just saw something," Julie said, pointing at one of the doors to the kitchen. "It went in there." The kitchen has two long areas, one behind the other, divided by a wall of ovens and stoves. The back section has two doors in it - one that leads to a hallway, and one that leads to the pantry. Both are very heavy, and would be impossible to open or close silently. As we were peering into the kitchen, we saw it - a tall, unnaturally thin figure sprinted across the back section towards the doors. There was absolutely no sound, even when it reached the end of the room. Logan, the bravest of us, walked into the kitchen, but there was nothing there. Like the girls we were, we ran away screaming.

All night, it seemed like we heard noises from every room we passed. Sometimes we followed them, but most of the time we kept moving. Foster swears she heard voices, and Julie said she heard someone laugh. The church was basically empty, it seemed, since everyone else had found the pair who was hiding. They turned out to be under a table in a fully lit part of the church - we hadn't even gone close to them.

I had never thought about our church being haunted until that night. I mean, no one had any ghost stories about it, and I had never experienced anything during other games of Sardines. It was built during the 70s and has never seen tragedy. If it is in fact haunted, I think the spirits were just having fun with us, all in the spirit of the game.